What Is a Gospel?

Francis Watson

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780802872920
• eBook ISBN: 9781467464895
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Critica e interpretazione biblica

When Christians speak of "the gospels" they're usually referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Other ancient writings about the life of Jesus are generally considered noncanonical or heretical. But what if these other gospel writings—including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, and the Protevangelium of James—aren't fundamentally different from the four canonical gospels? 

In this follow-up to  Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective, noted biblical scholar Francis Watson makes the case that viewing early gospel literature as a unified genre—sharing significant similarities in sources, content, and goals—allows us to discern important interrelated aspects that are lost amid the usual categories. Watson's critical approach enables modern readers of the Bible to break free of fraught scholarly assumptions in order to better understand early Christian identity formation and beliefs.

CHAPTER 1

What Is a Gospel?

Attempts to explain why the term “gospel” was applied to written texts assume a continuity with the Pauline understanding of gospel as oral proclamation and focus primarily or exclusively on the four canonical instances of the gospel genre. In contrast, this chapter highlights discontinuities between Pauline usage and the canonical evangelists, who—if they use the term “gospel” at all—never apply it to their own texts. There is no smooth linear development from an oral to a written gospel, but rather a contingent decision to use the word εὐαγγέλιον in a new way, the origin and rationale for which cannot now be traced. Beyond the canonical boundary there are a number of texts with close affinities to canonical gospels, whether or not they are designated as “gospels” by their authors and users, and a definition of the gospel genre must also accommodate gospel-like texts whose traditional titles relate them to other genres (thus there can be a gospel-like apocalypse). Characteristic of all gospels and gospel-like texts is (1) a focus on the human, earthly Jesus in his interactions with other humans; (2) an emphasis on his supreme and unsurpassable authority; and (3) direct or indirect attribution to an apostolic or quasi-apostolic source.

What is a gospel? This is a simple question to which we might expect a simple answer. The New Testament contains four texts universally known as gospels, and in spite of their well-known differences they have a great deal in common. All four canonical gospels present their readers with a narrative account of the ministry and teaching of Jesus, culminating in his death and resurrection. They may or may not contain stories about Jesus’s birth (as Matthew and Luke do) or his post-resurrection appearances (as Mark does not, at least in the earliest extant version), but otherwise it is essentially the same story that they tell in their different ways. In all four cases Jesus’s death is not just the end of his career as teacher and miracle worker but its goal. Long ago Martin Kähler could claim that the gospels are “passion narratives with an extended introduction.”¹ In support of this provocative and admittedly exaggerated claim, we might look to the Gospel of Mark, where Peter’s recognition of Jesus’s identity as the Christ is accompanied by the disclosure that as the Christ his divinely appointed destiny is to suffer, die, and be raised (GMk 8:27–31). Later gospels—Matthew, Luke, and John—retain this emphasis on Jesus’s cross and resurrection as the key both to his identity and to the gospel story as a whole.

Yet Kähler’s well-known statement answers a different question to the one we are asking here. To claim that the gospels are passion narratives with extended introductions is to describe what the four New Testament texts known as gospels have in common, but it is not yet clear why precisely this term “gospel” is applied to them, or why it should be applied to these four texts alone. The question, What is a gospel? is concerned with the literary genre known as gospel in contrast to, say, “epistle” or “apocalypse.” The New Testament contains a number of epistles and a single apocalypse, but texts within these literary genres are not found only in the New Testament. We would not define the genre known as apocalypse purely on the basis of the book of Revelation. While for most Christian communities a canonical boundary separates Revelation from the noncanonical 1 Enoch or 4 Ezra, all three works remain apocalypses—disclosures through superhuman agencies of heavenly secrets about the past, present, and/or future—in spite of a number of significant differences.² That same canonical boundary separates GJohn from GThomas, but both works have been handed down as “gospels.”³ Genre categories are unaffected by canonical status. If John is a narrative culminating in an account of the passion, that is not the case with GThomas, a collection of sayings or sayings-clusters introduced by the formula, “Jesus said …” or by a question from his disciples, and with minimal narrative content. A gospel may take narrative form, but narrative form is not inherent to the gospel genre as understood by those who attached the generic label “gospel” to texts of a certain type. GThomas was not excluded from the canon because it failed to feature a passion narrative with an extended introduction. Those who transmitted and used this text did not regard its lack of a narrative framework as disqualifying it from the designation “gospel.” Many early Christian readers valued their gospel literature precisely because it preserved the Lord’s sayings, and in that respect GThomas belongs to the mainstream.

If a gospel genre exists at all, it should be defined in such a way as to include GThomas and its extracanonical companions.⁴ That does not rule out additional generic affinities, however. Genres overlap, and no genre is exclusively itself.⁵ Without ceasing to be gospels, one gospel may share major formal and structural features with Greco-Roman βίοι whereas another may more closely resemble sayings collections or apocalypses. If secondary generic characteristics are one cause of diversity within a genre, diachronic development is another: genre is a dynamic process in which later works build on or react against their predecessors.⁶ In view of these complicating factors, a decision about which characteristics are salient to a genre definition and which are not is ultimately the responsibility of the interpreter.

After considering how the term “gospel” came to be attached to certain texts, I shall attempt a definition of the gospel genre that covers early gospels on both sides of the canonical boundary. The definition is intended to be pragmatically useful in identifying a group of early Christian texts that share—to a greater or lesser extent—a set of protagonists, themes, motifs, and lexical items that differentiate them from other early Christian texts, at least in combination. While it is true that all early Christian writings participate in a single intertextual network with no sharply defined boundaries, there are specific areas where the connections are more densely clustered. One of these areas of intertextual concentration is identified by the generic use of the term “gospel,” a usage established more by tradents and readers of this type of literature than by its authors. Yet key characteristics of literature designated as “gospel” are also evident in texts handed down under other designations (apocryphon, apocalypse, epistle, testament), and such texts may be described as “gospel-like” whatever the additional associations suggested by their titles. Titles of early Christian texts are valuable as initial indicators of generic affinities, but they are not necessarily decisive.⁷ The main reason why some gospel-like texts were not transmitted under the title “gospel” is that this primarily Pauline term was not universally regarded as the obvious and natural label to attach to the texts in question. As we shall see, there was no smooth and inevitable process whereby the proclaimed gospel was converted into a written version of the same thing.

The Gospel Proclaimed and Written

The term εὐαγγέλιον occurs sixty times in the Pauline corpus, with between six and nine occurrences in each of the authentic letters with the exception of Philemon, but with a notable falling off in the deutero-Pauline texts (twelve times in all) and in Acts (two times). In non-Pauline epistolary literature, εὐαγγέλιον occurs eight times in Ignatius but only once in the seven-letter Catholic epistles collection (1 Pet 4:17), once in Barnabas (5:9), and not at all in 1 Clement in spite of its great length. The evidence suggests that, with the exception of Paul, early Christian letter writers were familiar with the term εὐαγγέλιον but did not regard it as especially important as a designation of the core Christian message. Even in the case of Ignatius, six of his eight uses of εὐαγγέλιον occur in a single letter and may be a response to his opponent’s slogan, “If I do not find it in the archives [ἐν τοῖς ἀρχείοις, i.e., in the scriptures], in the gospel I do not believe” (Ign. Phld. 8.2).⁸ In the non-Pauline as well as Pauline contexts, εὐαγγέλιον always refers to the message as preached, not as written.⁹

Among the canonical evangelists, it is only Mark who shares Paul’s enthusiasm for the term εὐαγγέλιον, using it to introduce his gospel (“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ … ,” GMk 1:1), and to refer to the preaching of both Jesus (1:14, 15) and his followers (13:10; 14:9; [16:15]; cf. 8:35; 10:29). Matthew takes over just two of Mark’s uses of εὐαγγέλιον (GMt 24:14 // GMk 13:10; GMt 26:13 // GMk 14:9), although the Matthean Jesus is twice said to preach “the gospel of the kingdom” (GMt 4:23; 9:35). Neither Luke nor John uses the term at all. Designating these four texts as “gospels,” or collectively as “gospel,” has no basis within the texts themselves. No evangelist claims to be writing “a gospel.”¹⁰ Even in Mark, “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ …” should be connected to the scriptural citation that follows (“… as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send my messenger before your face,” GMk 1:2). The “beginning” in question is the beginning of the preaching of the gospel, through John the Baptizer, as foretold in prophetic scripture. John already proclaims “the gospel of Jesus Christ” when he announces the coming of the One who will baptize in the Holy Spirit (GMk 1:7–8). The phrase “the beginning of the gospel” also occurs in Paul and in exactly the same sense. Writing to the Philippians, Paul recalls his departure from Macedonia “in the beginning of the gospel [ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου]” (Phil 4:15)—that is, when the gospel was first preached among them. Similarly, Mark’s “beginning of the gospel” refers to the beginning of gospel preaching by the Isaianic voice “crying in the wilderness” (GMk 1:3).¹¹ No canonical gospel originally presented itself as εὐαγγέλιον, and in the two that use the term it always refers to the preached message (as in Paul and Ignatius) and not to a written text.

The Pauline gospel can be summarized as the message “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve …” (1 Cor 15:3–5). For Ignatius similarly, the gospel message announces “the coming [παρουσία] of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, his passion, and the resurrection,” in agreement with “the beloved prophets” who “proclaimed him beforehand [κατήγγειλαν εἰς αὐτόν]” (Ign. Phld. 9.2). Much of the same ground is covered by the four canonical gospels. They all speak of Jesus’s coming, of his death, burial, and resurrection on the third day, and—if we take the Longer Ending of Mark into account—his post-resurrection appearances. On the other hand, the gospel Easter stories are only loosely related to Paul’s list of appearances. The one point at which the canonical stories basically agree—the discovery of the empty tomb—is absent in Paul. That the death of Christ “for our sins” and his third day rising took place “according to the scriptures” is not a prominent theme in the canonical gospels.¹² Even Matthew takes far more trouble to find scriptural fulfillments at the beginning of Jesus’s life and ministry than at its end.¹³ And of course the canonical gospels contain a preponderance of material to which Paul hardly ever refers, the traditions of Jesus’s ministry of teaching and healing, Kähler’s “extended introductions.”¹⁴

The relationship between Paul’s preached gospel and the written narrative gospel becomes still more problematic in a second Pauline summary of the message he preached. Writing to his Thessalonian congregation, Paul reminds them how, in response to his preaching, “you turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God and to await his Son from heaven, Jesus, who rescues us from...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. What Is a Gospel?
• 2. Seven Ways to Dispose of Judas Iscariot
• 3. How Did Mark Survive?
• 4. Does Luke Need Q?
• 5. Q and the Logia
• 6. Luke Rewriting and Rewritten
• 7. The Gospel of the Apostles
• 8. Jesus versus the Lawgiver
• 9. Making Sense of the Betrayer
• 10. Reception as Corruption
• 11. Toward a Redaction-Critical Reading of the Diatessaron Gospel
• 12. Lindisfarne and the Art of the Fourfold Gospel
• 13. Eschatology and the Twentieth Century
• 14. A Reply to My Critics
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography